Literary Criticism and Reviews

Although I have worked in academia for a good 30 years, I have been fortunate never to have been employed in a publish-or-perish type of position.  I simply happen to like to write, and of course writings of one kind of another—whether from the established canon of traditional “literature” or from more popular genres like science fiction—have been a focus of much of my thought over the years.  When I was teaching in the classroom, many were the times that in the middle of some freewheeling but also carefully prompted back-and-forth discussion with undergrads, a topic suddenly came up that made me wonder, Has anybody thought of it like this before...?  That, I think, is how literary criticism starts.  For myself, I have never written about something because I “had” to, but only because some aspect of the work really intrigued me.

Matthew Arnold in his 1864 essay “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” suggests that the literary critic should
[ask] himself of what real service, at any given moment, the practice of criticism either is or may be made to his own mind and spirit, and to the minds and spirits of others.
Regardless of one’s particular critical outlook, Arnold’s assertion is, I think, a very difficult thing to argue with.  If we are simply comparing and contrasting certain aspects of two authors’ works without evaluating the their meaning, are merely noting the presence of some stylistic device in a piece of writing without investigating how it helps us understand something, or are just quibbling about how some work should be labelled or pigeon-holed...what have we really accomplished?  What have we taught ourselves or our readers?  What does it matter?  These are things which the critic, whether a professor in a scholarly journal, an undergraduate in a freshman composition class, or a student in high school English, should consider very seriously.  I hope that I have, even in my briefest articles.

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